(with thanks to Ariel Gomez) “Justus quidem tu es.” – Gerard Manley Hopkins Minus one gene, cells that swing red or green— fascia or hormone— should groan, cease, dissolve to cell-ghost and bone. When staying true would have meant giving death’s due, instead they became something new. When faithfulness to what we knew about what they need would have meant a fatal bleed, cells knew better, needed less— were simple, simply were, and let themselves have happiness.

Let us go then, you and I, when the fields are spread with neonicoti(noids) like a bee displayed upon a needle. Let us go then, through certain half-deserted rows of corn that rustles, grows from corporate seed catalogs (all for low-end restaurants with soda and hot dogs). Bees that follow with a tedious hum but insidious poison may lead them to an overwhelming population crash. Oh, do not eat high fructose syrup! Let us ban neonics in Europe.   In the fields, the honeybees come and go trying to pollinate the rows.

for Julie Bianca Dahl Surgeons in an airport bus are lions at a zoo. They laze, dimly happy to see you. Tails barely flickering in the stagnant savannah air, Khaki pants sticking to pleather seat cushions, They look up only when you mention meat. Their forearms are clean, but you can smell the blood, See the line of skin roughened from washing. I tell them that I paint the body parts they move. We speak of organs as objects of art, The pinking liver finding itself alive in a new home, The invigorated pancreas, spurting kidneys—oh, joy of piss! Above…